


Perennial

by ancestrallizard



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Genre: Child Death, Gen, nothing graphic but referenced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 01:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14321541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancestrallizard/pseuds/ancestrallizard
Summary: It takes Cain awhile to adjust.





	Perennial

In his first reincarnation, Cain cries often as a child. A phantom loneliness pierces him, one he cannot explain for decades until his dreams coalesce and tell him who he is. His true family has been gone for hundreds of years. 

After enough of the mundane tragedies of life – the deaths of parents, siblings, lovers, children, multiplied through countless cycles – his soul numbs, but his first family leaves a void that’s never filled. 

At first he wants to do better. Wants to prove to himself if no one else that he never deserved to be cursed. His crime was an aberration, committed under extreme circumstances. 

But the truth is, Abel follows him more often than not, innocent and bright no matter the time or place. He dogs Cain’s heels like one of his lambs, ignorant and experiencing everything anew without thousands of years breaking him under their weight. 

(He can’t understand – Abel hadn’t committed any sins. Why was he there?)

The truth is, even before memories take root and unfurl, the emotions are evergreen. He is wretched without knowing why, afraid without knowing why, and hates before he has tasted anything beyond milk. 

The truth is, Abel outshines him more often than not, and Cain doesn’t know if it’s the curse or his own soul that won’t let him accept their one-sided rivalry. 

(If Abel was smarter, if Abel didn’t trust so easily, if Abel had fought him instead of staring at him with hurt, stupid eyes Cain wouldn’t be stuck like this, with a hornet’s nest of memories tearing his mind and melting past and present until he can barely distinguish the year or the day or his name).

The truth is, God is always out of reach, buried in the depths of his heaven. 

Abel isn’t.

(It’s easiest when they’re young.) 

Cain gets away with it more often than not. People are too busy searching, then mourning, then investigating, to begin suspecting the child’s distant relative or neighbor or foster-sibling. 

And besides, why would such a young child ever do such a thing? 

Even when he is caught, all he needs to slip free is finely tuned crocodile tears and near-incoherent rambling that it was an accident, that he didn’t know the river was so deep, that the cliff was so far from the ground, that the other child wasn’t following him when they took a walk in the woods. 

The world forgets, and in sixty years or less he’s right back where he started, staring into his brother’s eyes as they’re introduced like they haven’t met each other hundreds of thousands of times before. 

He stops out of despair, not pity. No matter what he does, Abel won’t go away. It’s better in the long run to channel his energy into research, accumulating enough knowledge and power to end God and His curse for good. It takes more lives than it should to wrangle the resentment, but by his life as Naoya it’s well-broken and harnessed, its energy redirected toward completing his mission. 

Attachment to Abel sprouts, not uprooting prior emotions but growing alongside them like a creeper vine. A predictable byproduct of living with him since he was a toddler – it’s the longest time they’ve lived together for hundreds of years. They’re even brothers again, if only legally. 

Once again Abel dogs his footsteps. Once again Cain tolerates him, tries to teach him what he knows and how to survive whether Abel wants to know it or not.

The relationship strains over the years but there is still pride watching him grow. By necessity, it’s a distant, formal pride. His brother’s soul is a tool. He will be honed and protected until Cain needs him.

If he fails or disrupts Cain’s plan, he has no qualms jump-starting the cycle again.

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to try something different, and no better way to ring in a storm of anxiety and doubt about the future than trying to write something new.
> 
>  
> 
> tumblr at ancestrallizard.tumblr.com


End file.
